My grocery budget is every 2 weeks so right before the 2 weeks begins I sit down with my grocery store circular and 2 pieces of paper. On one I write
M T W H F S S twice down the side for the days of the week, and the other is my grocery list.

I check what I have in the freezer/fridge and what is on sale that week and go off that. I take requests from the husband and have Breakfast for dinner (Brinner) on Saturdays week and Pasta every Thursday and Sunday big lunch. Soup is usually monday or wednsedayAfter I fill in Saturdays, Thursdays, and Sundays, I go from there. I write down the main dish and veggie. We're only a family of 2 adults, a toddler, and a baby, so a standard recipe can usually feed us 2 meals. Sunday night we call "fend" days (as in "fend for yourself") where we just kind of cobble together a meal from whatever we have around because we have a big pasta lunch that day. So it usually works out like this

repeat for week 2 I change it up with lots of different meat recipes and lots of different soup recipes. And sometimes Brinner is waffles or pancakes, and sometimes it is bacon and eggs, or veggie omelets. So there is variety within the easy to plan framework!

Once I have the weeks' meals planned, I write the grocery list of ingredients I need. I do a big shop every 2 weeks. It works for us! I'm sure when we have more kids/older kids things will change a lot but maybe you'll get some inspiration from the way I do it.

Hope that helps!

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loving being a stay at home wife to DH (married 4/11/09) and mommy to DD1 (10/4/10) and little DD2 (5/30/12) and expecting baby #3 in March!